Terminals may be generally classified as mobile/portable terminals or stationary terminals according to their mobility. Mobile terminals may also be classified as handheld terminals or vehicle mount terminals according to whether or not a user can directly carry the terminal.
As functions of the terminal are getting diversified, the terminal tends to be implemented as a multimedia player provided with composite functions such as photographing of photos or videos, playback of music or video files, game play, broadcast reception and the like for example.
To support and enhance such terminal functions, structural and/or software parts may consider being improved.
A user input means for controlling such a mobile terminal mainly uses a touchscreen. Since the touchscreen is equipped with both an output means and an input means, it is considerably advantageous in providing a user with an intuitive controlling method. The reason why the controlling method through the touchscreen is intuitive is that the mobile terminal can be controlled in a manner of outputting icons indicating control commands providable to a user and then touching the corresponding icons.
However, such a controlling method using a touchscreen is disadvantageous in that an icon corresponding to each control command should be outputted to a screen, whereas the method is advantageous in being intuitive. Thus, if the number of control commands supposed to be inputted from a user increases, the number of icons outputted to a touchscreen increases as well. Hence, the touchscreen may not be able to sufficiently play a role as an output means. Moreover, as the development of wearable devices tends to be accelerated and a touchscreen provided to such a wearable device is relatively small, the above-mentioned controlling method is not appropriate. In particular, the above-mentioned method of controlling the mobile terminal using the touchscreen may hinder a touchscreen function as an output means.
Thus, the demand for researching & developing various mobile terminal controlling methods implemented through a touchscreen is rising.